The present teachings are predicated upon providing an improved heater and more preferably an improved heater for use in a vehicle. Generally, heaters include a wire that is formed in a pattern. The wire produces heat when electricity is applied to the wire. The wire may also be placed in a carbonaceous material so that as the wire heats up the heat is diffused into the carbonaceous material heating a larger area. However, achieving uniform heating in these devices may not always be achieved and hot spots may occur around the heating wires. Further, if a heating wire breaks the heater may cease to heat. Heaters may also include electrodes that are connected by a positive temperature coefficient material so that electricity is conducted from one electrode through the positive coefficient material to the other electrode and heat is produced. Other heaters have a woven configuration where a plurality of long materials are woven together to form a heater. These heaters may result in hot spots along one or more of the long materials as these materials may allow for current drift along one wire. Examples of heaters may be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,824,996; 5,935,474; 6,057,530; 6,150,642; 6,172,344; 6,294,758; 7,053,344; 7,285,748; and 7,838,804; U.S. Patent Application Publication Nos. 2003/155347; 2004/0211772; 2007/0278210; 2009/024548; 2010/0200558; and 2010/0282458; European Patent No. EP2400814; and Japanese Patent Publication No. JP02-120039 all of which are incorporated by reference herein for all purposes.
It would be attractive to have a high degree of flexibility to conform to an occupant and to avoid crinkling noises or the like in response to occupant motion. It would be attractive to minimize part quantities in an assembly and correspondingly to reduce assembly steps. Notwithstanding what exists today, car manufacturers and others continue to seek low cost, light weight, and easy to manufacture ways to provide a heating surface. In this regard one attractive feature is to be free of dependency upon fluctuating prices for high demand metals such as gold, silver, copper, or the like. It would be attractive to avoid dependency of adhesive bonding of conductive metals to a surface.
What is needed is a flexible seat heater that is free of and/or substantially free of gold, silver, and copper. It would be attractive to have a heater that may be subjected to a flexing action without partial or complete failure of all or a portion of the heater. It would be attractive to have a heater that exhibits uniform heating across the heater without having to employ complex power supply configurations and/or expensive controllers. What is further needed is a flexible seat heater that may be cut, bent, shaped, formed, or a combination thereof without losing any heating functions.